bdhsfz6
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2015
- Messages
- 2,312
- Location
- Northeastern Pennsylvania
- Tractor
- Kubota MX5800 HST & L6060 HSTC Formerly L6060 HST B7100 HST, L2550, L3010 HST, L3430 HST
What do you pay for your 4G/LTE service? I assume you canceled Starlink due to the higher cost?I'm north of Vernon BC and was able to order Starlink along with an ethernet adapter(for the new Gen 2 equipment) March 22. It was scheduled to ship April 1 to April 7. I canceled the order today and will reapply when I get get my refund.
I'm on cellular service from a tower 30 km away. The signal (using dual yagiREF2 antennae) was great until December 2020 when it abruptly went from -92 dBm to -119. It has remained that way since. I tried several times to get past the "Help Desk" call centre to 2nd-level support but no such luck. Our downloads of around 15 to 20 Mbps was acceptable but the upload speed of 200 kbps made it difficult to send anything with photos, etc. I checked the connection every month or so the over the last two years with it always showing around -119 dBm with the usual acceptable 15+ Mbps download and poor 200 Kbps upload speeds.
So yesterday I decided to check the signal. It is now steady at -92 dBm with uploads averaging around 15 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up on LTE and 45 Mbps down and 11 Mbps up with on 4G. I think the LTE/4G switching is due to the service changing between the 700 MHz band and higher bands. I don't know anything about this but that is what a 2nd-level person told me the one time in December 2015. That resulted in my installing the yagi antennae.
Since my testing has been on the weekend I would have preferred to wait until the business day tomorrow to see if service degrades due to higher traffic. But I canceled anyway to be sure they did not ship the equipment and I'd have to ship it back. I'm impressed with Starlink's procedures. As soon as I canceled the account I got three emails stating they have submitted refund for the original deposit, the Starlink equipment and ethernet adapter. When those show up I'll re-order to get back on the waiting list, just in case the cell service reverts to a poor signal.
Starlink is a much better option from a speed point of view but our existing service more than meets our requirements(in our late '70's). My main concerns with Starlink was the likely long downtime to get new equipment should some component fail, the work installing it, and the higher power requirements(including heating in winter). My existing internet will operate for hours during a power outage. That lets us check BC Hydro's Outage System to see if it has been reported and to get and idea when it will be back on. Even with Starlink I was planning to keep a "bare bones" cellular plan at $10 month as a backup(we don't have data cell phone plans).
Regardless, I'll reapply for Starlink again to keep that option open.
The Gen 2 equipment lets you turn off the dish heater to conserve power. It also has an automatic setting which turns it off when the temps are above freezing. The power requirements are somewhat less than the Gen 1 system.